R1,054.55

by Carl Wrbka

In my opinion this is currently the best low end soldering station aimed at the hobbyist market.

There is however one major quirk worth mentioning:

The iron uses a single ceramic heating element as opposed to the dual elements used by the higher end irons. This specific element is rated to 420 deg Celsius and Velleman warns as follows: "The heating element may be damaged when its temperature reaches 430 °C". After 8 years of general purpose hobbyist type use at 350 deg Celsius, I briefly turned mine up to 400 degrees on the dial for a more demanding multi-layer PCB repair task and the heater promptly burned out after about 10 seconds at this setting.

For the hobbyist, this soldering station will give you many years of good service for general purpose soldering on primarily single layer boards, but if you are also into servicing of commercial electronic equipment, rather spend a bit more and invest in a higher end brand like Weller or Magnum.